Size Matters

[andrewducker]

Well, possibly.

There's been plenty of stuff written up about why tall people are more likely to do well professionally, but I hadn't really encountered it myself until today, when I went along to the Scrum of Scrums (someone from each team working on the project goes along to report on the overall progress).  I was the shortest man there - and at 5'10" I'm used to being at least average height - with most of the other attendees being 6'2".  The women were more varied, but they were still mostly taller than average.

Comments

[meltie.livejournal.com]

This is why I wear 3" platform boots at work.

[andrewducker]

I'm not _entirely_ sure that would get me a raise.

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

Surely it'd get you a 3'' raise, guaranteed?

Maybe more, if you stand on tiptoes.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Heh. My husband's 5' tall; there's just no way to get him a significant lift. 3" won't do anything but highlight the fact that he's short.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

That's why, one morning, I rampaged around the office cutting everyone else's head or feet off, as the mood took me.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

I have noticed that the more senior the group I'm with, the taller & more male they are likely to be.

As my career progresses, I look less & less my peers...

[andrewducker]

The group was 60% male, 40% female, so it wasn't too bad. I know we're unusual for IT though.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

This is why I dislike those "lets stand around and talk to each other" parts of off-site meetings - most of the department is taller than me to the extent of being able to talk over the top of my head. I dislike craning my neck to join in.

[likeneontubing.livejournal.com]

that's very interesting!

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Can you say more about how your Scrum of Scrums works? Also, what are you doing to get malingerers, copperheads, and know-nothings Scrum skeptics on board?

[andrewducker]

We've been doing agile (of a sort) for about five years, so we have buy in from most people, in most ways. The biggest difference has been having end users embedded in the teams, so that there's a constant feedback cycle and we're not producing things they don't want (but did ask for). I think everyone appreciates that.

We _do_ have occasional problems with non-functional stuff, and that's part of what we've been working on recently. Four of us (including me) were moved out of functional huddles (working on a specific area of functionality) into a technical team, who keep the environmental stuff running and deal with code quality, infrastructural changes, making sure the system can deal with large numbers of cases at once, etc. This means that everyone else can get on with their immediate work without being distracted. Each scrum/huddle is about 8 people (three coders, two Business Analysts/testers, one IS analyst, one end-user expert and a manager) and then a rep from each scrum, plus someone from the tech scrum, the testing manager and the overall manager get together once a day for 15 minutes, see what the blockers are and how much progress has been made, and then update a couple of large A3 charts on the walls with sticky things to make it clear where we are and what's going on.

It's not a perfect system, but it works better than anything else we've tried.